Environment

Pete Mason, from the Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party (CWI in
England & Wales)

When is an agreement not an agreement? When it’s an agreement to reach
an agreement in the future…

When is an agreement not an agreement? When it’s an agreement to reach
an agreement in the future.

Far from being a "huge step forward" as Energy and Climate Change
Secretary Chris Huhne insists, claims of success at the climate
conference in Durban, South Africa are fraudulent.

The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a legally
binding new accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto protocol (which had no
effect on global warming whatsoever), to take effect by 2020.

Canada has just announced it has withdrawn from Kyoto. But Kyoto expires
next year anyway - the Canadian government’s last-minute rebuff
demonstrates that the likelihood of a 2020 binding agreement resulting
from the Durban conference is almost non-existent.

The capitalist government representatives gathered in South Africa
ultimately protect a failed system which is the cause of - but cannot
provide a solution for - global warming.

Durban was nothing but a deferment, while the world’s global
temperatures are rising faster than ever. 2020 is simply too late,
locking the world into a dangerous future.

A promise of tens of billions of dollars a year for poor countries to
fight global warming is worthless, with no means of raising the cash
agreed.

Those signing up included China, as required by the United States before
it would come to the table. The US government fears competition from
China. Witness China’s huge scale of production of solar panels, which
has accelerated a seven-fold fall in prices since 1985.

Instead of leading to the worldwide replacement of fossil fuels with
cheap solar panels (alongside other renewables) in networks of locally
produced electricity, the price collapse has sent US solar panel
companies out of business.

Clearly, this self-destructive free-market madness must be ended and
replaced by democratic planning of a publicly owned energy industry
worldwide. This would allow the rapid transformation of the planet
impossible under capitalism.

Action is urgent. The powerful workers’ struggle against the neoliberal
governments which are implementing savage austerity measures around the
world is a struggle against the very same governments which failed once
again to protect the planet. Such struggles show the only way forward.